The Animal Turn

Bonus: Psychoanalysis and the Meat-Commodity with Teddy Duncan Jr.

• Claudia Hirtenfelder

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In this episode Claudia talks Teddy Duncan Jr. who departs from the Marxian consideration of the meat-commodity to think about how psychoanalysis, especially Lacanian psychoanalysis, might be useful in understanding human relations with meat. They discuss the interconnections of language, disavowal, symbolism, jouissance, and ‘the Real’ in this discussion. 

Date Recorded: 12 November 2025

Teddy Duncan Jr is a professor at Valencia College in Orlando, Florida. Teddy’s academic writing on subjects such as animality, psychoanalysis, pedagogy, and philosophy has been published in Between the Species, Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, the International Journal of Zizek Studies, The Latin American Literary Review, and The Midwest Quarterly. His freelance writing on art, politics, and literature has appeared in publications such as The Observer, Compact Magazine, Document Journal, and Washington Independent Review of Books, among others. His first academic book, Interpreting Meat, was released in late 2024.  Get in touch with Teddy Duncan via tduncan15@valenciacollege.edu

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The Animal Turn is hosted and produced by Claudia Hirtenfelder and is part of the  iROAR Network. Learn more on our website. 

Meat As A Broken Promise

Siobhan O'Sullivan

This is another iROAR podcast.

Teddy Duncan Jr.

It's almost like a promise that a commodity is making. A commodity is saying this is something that serves a subject, right? This is an object that serves a subject. Well, the the entire idea of the meat commodity subverts that because it's a subject that is converted into an object and then you know goes to humans, right? So of course, I but I think for most people we consider to some degree again uh animals as subjects. So that promise is kind of broken uh with the with the meat commodity.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

Welcome back to the Animal Turn, everyone. This is a bonus episode where I'm speaking to the author of a book called Interpreting Meat, Theorizing the Commodification and Consumption of Animals. As I mentioned uh at the start of the episode, I found reading this book. It's a thin book, and the beginning of the book, the first three chapters, I was like, I'm with you. And then and then we switched to psychoanalysis, and I was like, oh, hang on, this is a bit muddy for me. Uh and I'm really happy that I spoke to Teddy because um Teddy Duncan, who's the author of this book, really made psychoanalysis and some of the concepts that he's applying to thinking about meat as a commodity super accessible. Um, I I learned about so much in this episode. I learned about everything from how language and unconscious behavior operates and works to the ways in which perhaps we do things we find distasteful and even get joy in doing the things we dislike to how sometimes fantasy operates, how we do these kinds of defensive or avoidance uh strategies or mechanisms that we're possibly unaware of and that helps us sustain uh behaviors that we find objectionable. And so really interesting and a different take on commodity that's perhaps different from some of the market analyses and ways in which we think about animals. So I very much enjoyed uh talking to Teddy. I just say goodbye to him and I'm gushing a little. I said to him, Oh, you should teach because my brain is really feeling a bit bent. So I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I enjoyed having a conversation. Uh let me tell you a little bit about Teddy. Uh Teddy Duncan Jr. is a professor at Valencia College in Orlando, Florida. His scholarly work on subjects such as literary theory, Lacanian psychoanalysis and philosophy has been published in International Journal of Azizek Studies between the species, the Latin American Literary Review and the Midwest Quarterly. Uh it's a great interview. It's a bonus episode. Um make sure to go and check out the book uh if you have an opportunity. Uh but yeah, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode. All right. Uh hi Teddy, welcome to the Animal Tone Podcast. It's great to have you on the show. We've been in communication back and forth for, I'm embarrassed to say, but a long, long time. You sent me a book, was it at the beginning of this year or last year already?

Teddy Duncan Jr.

I think probably January. Yeah, January of this year.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

Yeah, um, I'm sorry, I have like a bazillion books. It turns out the publishers are now sending me books and I enjoy reading them, but I really do want to actually read the books before I speak to people. So it's taken me a spot of time. Um, but I've read your book now, Interpreting Meat, Theorizing the Commodification and Consumption of Animals. And um I very much enjoyed reading it. I have to say it was quite a challenging read for me. I'm not a philosopher, so um, I think hopefully our conversation today will help me understand some of your concepts a bit more. But we're going to be speaking about one of the central concepts in your book, which is meat hyphen commodity, meat commodity, right? And of course, the meat commodity is a really common subject in animal studies. Um, but I think you're bringing something new to this conversation. So hopefully we can unpack that a bit today. Uh, but before we dive into it, as always, uh the listeners don't know uh who you are, maybe. So can you tell us a little bit about yourself and and how you came to be interested in in animal studies?

Teddy Duncan Jr.

Yes, and I want to say first, uh I appreciate you having me on. And uh, you know, when we first talked, you said it was gonna be a while, so there was no worries about anything like that. You said, hey, you know, I I have a backlog, it's gonna be uh like uh six months to a year and I'll think. Okay, so I I expected it and you were uh transparent about that. So no problems. I appreciate you.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

Great, thank you. I like perpetually feel so you know what, as a as an aside, my New Year's resolution for next year is to not be behind. And I know that sounds like a bizarre thing, but I feel like since January, I've been behind on everything. I just committed to too many things, which means I've been behind on a million things. Um, and my goal between now and the end of the year is to just like get things done that I committed to so that next year I don't have that hamster wheel feel. Uh anyway, personal problems, I'm sorry, but um it's great to have you on the show.

Why Meat Needs Its Own Lens

Teddy Duncan Jr.

Uh but I'm uh uh Teddy Duncan Jr. I am an assistant professor at Valencia College in Orlando, Florida, uh, which is kind of like a they're no longer community college, uh, but practically they're they're community college uh here. Um and I've been writing about animal studies since I was in graduate school. So since about last about five years, since about 2020, uh been kind of engaged in in animal studies.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

All right. And and was it what was your introduction? Why animals? How did you come to be interested in that?

Teddy Duncan Jr.

There's kind of a sequence of things that happened. First is just like personally, uh I've been a vegetarian since 2015. Uh so about the last 10 years, since I like turned 18, I'm 28 now, uh, because I met my now fiance Vin. She was a pescetarian, and then you know, just logically we moved into vegetarianism. And I was always really interested in kind of having a formulation of why I was vegetarian, because there's so many questions. You know, I'm around even now, 99.5% of the people that I know are all eat meat. Uh so they have a lot of questions about why you're vegetarian. I always kind of really wanted to have a proper formulation uh of why I was vegetarian. Uh, and kind of in a way to explain that to people beyond like the the intuitive feeling of seeing an animal and having kind of an empathetic response. I was always kind of like, I wanted a sentence or two that could describe that to someone else. Uh and I was always really, those conversations were always really interested to me with people that ate meat. Like you get into all these territories of history and uh ethics and and philosophy that that you don't really expect. And then when I was an undergraduate, I took an animal ethics class. And that I found out then that this is an entire field. Uh, and then from there got introduced to like what I would call like uh, you know, like animal studies, like Carrie Wolf and people like that. Uh that became really important.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

Okay, so so it's interesting that you decided to focus on the meat commodity as opposed to, let's say, the dairy commodity or or the milk commodity. What was the what was the impetus there? Because obviously dairy is still a central part of your diet. So why do you think focusing on meat as opposed to, let's say, milk or leather or uh another type of commodity that is made from animals, why do you think the meat commodity is something uh essential for animal study scholars to focus on?

Teddy Duncan Jr.

That's something where there's a couple of different reasons for that. Where, first off, I want to focus on specificity. Where I don't want it's not a denial that all of these things are kind of uh there's an underlying operation between all of these things. So there's no denial of that, that there's a relationship between the meat commodity, the dairy commodity, you know, the cheese commodity, all of these things, right? That there's a relationship between all of them. Uh and and vegan studies does a good job of that, but I really wanted to look at the specificity of a specific commodity uh and kind of extract it out of kind of the larger field. Yes, and so I think it was it was important uh, again, even though this is emerging from an entire field of animal products and animal commodities, I think it was important to kind of hone in on one thing, look at its specificity, uh, and try to understand what is specifically the the meat commodity, how does this thing operate uh kind of on its own, different from these other uh commodities? And that probably emerges from a personal interest as a as a vegetarian, at least initially it emerged uh from there. Uh, because in my, and this is a personal, but like in my ethical kind of understanding, uh, you know, the meat commodity is the thing that I really find uh the kind of kind of I have an ethical kind of stance against as as a vegetarianism.

From Marx To Lacan

Claudia Hirtenfelder

Well, I mean, I think it's interesting, right? So for for a lot of vegans, myself included, we would look at and say, well, the like you say, the the dairy industry is in intimately entangled with the meat industry, right? This is something you know. Uh dairy cows become meat at some point. But I think what you're saying here is is fair that what happens when we look at a specific um product or commodity? And what is it about meat that not only captures vegans, but also vegetarians, also pescatarians, right? There's something about meat that for all of these groups becomes objectionable in one shape or form, uh, which makes it pretty distinct from the other the other animal-based commodities. So there's there is some sort of specificity there, like you say, to uh to meat in the way in which it sits in people's imaginaries. And I suspect part of that has to do with the fact that people equate meat with death to one extent or another, right? People uh have this idea that uh some of the other animal products that we get, like honey or or milk or cheese or whatever, aren't inherently tied to death or killing. Um so in your your book you unpack a whole bunch of themes related to the meat commodity. And I think a lot of us are more familiar with, let's say, a Marxist analysis of the commodity or an understanding of the commodity, but you bring in psychoanalysis into the conversation, especially towards the end of the book. Um and it's it's rich and it's detailed. So maybe we can just take a step back here and think about the book interpreting meat. What were you hoping to achieve with this book? And maybe you could explain that progression of how you move towards psychoanalysis uh at the end of the book.

Teddy Duncan Jr.

Yeah, so there's definitely a shift that occurred, like in my own kind of uh scholarship. I started this when I was in, or the idea of it started in in graduate school uh from a from a paper that was what turned in out to be the first chapter, which was on the uh the Holocaust slaughterhouse analogy. And that kind of has a really distinct, and you've you've detected this, has a really distinct kind of Marxian kind of view. Uh but mostly, and this is where I kind of hit a wall, I was using Marx in the negative sense. And I mean like the the marks of Das Capital, not the Marx of the Communist Manifesto, not someone that's positing that we should have a different economic system, but the Marx that's critical of capitalism. Uh and then a couple of chapters in, uh, I started reading a lot of kind of different scholars. So I was always from the beginning reading Slavoj Zizek, who brings together Marx in psychoanalysis. Uh, but then towards the end, I kind of have this turn just kind of in the scholarship that I was reading towards psychoanalysis and towards uh Lacan. And I was so surprised that there hasn't been a lot of scholarship bringing together psychoanalysis in Lacan. And animal studies has been kind of uh dismissive on what psychoanalysis can bring, mainly because uh psychoanalysis doesn't always take animals very seriously. So there's kind of two ends of this poll where psychoanalysis doesn't take animals very serious, and uh on the other side of that, animal studies doesn't take psychoanalysis very serious. Uh but I think psychoanalysis has something to say about animals.

What Psychoanalysis Studies

Claudia Hirtenfelder

So maybe again, let's take another step back. Is someone who has no idea what psychoanalysis is, what is what is psychoanalysis? Um, and okay, I'm gonna ask you a really unfair question now. One, what is psychoanalysis? And two, a brief summary of how Lacan is involved in this conversation.

Teddy Duncan Jr.

So psychoanalysis is the uh I would probably distinguish it from uh psychology, where psychology is looking at kind of uh, you know, empirical studies on how the mind works and things like that. Psychoanalysis is the only field that takes the unconscious seriously. Uh and the unconscious is pretty much the inaccessible parts uh that informs our behaviors. And I think if you think about meat for a second and kind of the consumption of animals, you can see how important the unconscious might be of the part that informs someone's behaviors that they're not kind of aware of. Um and Lacan.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

I mean, a classic, sorry, a classic uh thing here, a lot of people or activists that try to you know bring about behavior change say that they're engaging in consciousness raising, right? So this is to your point, right? A lot of it is trying to actually make people aware of their own behavior.

Teddy Duncan Jr.

Yeah, and that's exactly what I think psychoanalysis has to offer is bringing forth not just uh a subconscious or consciousness, but bringing forth the unconscious. So trying to understand where these behaviors emerge from in kind of this inaccessible, uh repressed state. Uh, because why is it pressed? Because this is a kind of uh such of a visceral subject. Uh, you know, the death of an animal is something that you might want to uh kind of repress. And that's where I get into different ideas throughout the book. But to think about Lacan, uh, Lacan specifically brings together psychoanalysis and pretty much the study of language. Uh so his kind of big assertion is that the unconscious consists of pretty much language, of uh what he calls the signifier, which is kind of the uh uh the kind of written version of a word, pretty much, if I had to kind of say it uh like that. So he says that the unconscious consists of signifiers and language, and that we can, the only way that the unconscious emerges is through our use of language. So certain like linguistic practices. So uh for instance, like if you want to connect this to someone, uh maybe some of the listeners are familiar with uh uh Carol Adams and like the absent reference, right? Where we refer to uh you know dead pigs as pork, right? And there's a severance, just linguistic severance. Well, Lacan might have say that it has something to do with kind of uh an unconscious uh resistance to referring to the alive pig. So he would kind of he would kind of connect the absent referent to unconscious practices or kind of unconscious repressions.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

So for Lacan, language would be an entry point, an analytical entry point into understanding uh, I suppose, human relations and not only the human relations that we're consciously aware of, but importantly the human what sustains human relations in ways we're not conscious or not necessarily aware of. So he views he views language as the access point to understanding these processes.

Teddy Duncan Jr.

Yes, uh, because if we're gonna understand the unconscious, the only way that we're able to do this is intersubjectively, which means it's something that comes between me and another. And how do how is there uh a transmission between me and another? It's through language. If the unconscious is something that I can't access myself, the only way it's going to be accessible is through my transmission of it, my kind of mistransmission, because that's what the unconscious would be. So, like if you want to take like a classic Floridian example, uh what he calls uh paraprax, what's called like parapraxis, or like what we call now like the Pyridian slip, right? Like someone's talking about their, uh they mean to talk about their wife and they talk about their mother, right? Like in the con in like the you know the classic Oedipal uh kind of example. And that's something where there's this the language, uh kind of the emergence of that, this inadvertent emergence tells us some unconscious truth, which you know for Freud would be you know the Oedipus complex and things like that.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

So is it a matter of what we say isn't always what we mean, or what we say means more than we think?

Teddy Duncan Jr.

What we mean, what we say means more than we think. What we say uh means more than what we can access, and what we can't access informs our behaviors and who we are.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

Okay, so why then would how how does this become um I hate using the word quantifiable? That's not the right word. Like how how is it possible to uh understand or access this as another person, right? So if this is an unconscious state, what means that another person hearing person A hearing person B's expression of X? Person A hearing person B's expression of X, how does person A have any sort of more enlightened understanding of what person B's unconscious or subconscious is doing?

Teddy Duncan Jr.

It would be by uh positing like a structure beneath it. So like for instance, like to use like the classic Faridian example, like the Oedibus complex, like he's saying this is a structure that's a he universalizes this. Like he's saying this isn't just something that emerges in one instance, one particular instance. This is a universalizable structure that's applicable to uh you know all of humanity. And you know, you can be critical of that, I'm just using it as an example, but you say there's an underlying structure, and that's uh, you know, universalizable to you know certain degrees and things like that. Maybe you limit it to a culture or something, and you're saying you appeal to that structure uh underlying it, and you say, that's how I know uh what the unconscious, what the kind of unconscious transmission means.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

Is it through doing sort of any empirical analysis? So through seeing how many times people use this language while doing X, or is it uh a theoretical enterprise? Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.

Teddy Duncan Jr.

It's a theoretical enterprise with some uh you know some case studies that emerge from from actual uh clinical psychoanalysts.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

Okay, interesting. And and do you think the the So, I mean, in the book you also connect psychoanalysis with material conditions. In the introduction of the book, you're very clear that you're interested in how the actual materiality of the meat commodity. So, how do you end up tying these two together, thinking about the materiality of meat with the kind of subconscious understandings of meat?

Teddy Duncan Jr.

That there are these linguistic practices, uh, which I argue are unconscious, a lot of them, result in these uh material practices, or at least they're indicative of them. So, for instance, like think about naming practices. What what kind of animals do we name and what does it do to name an animal? When you name an animal, that's giving it a certain like moral status. You individuate it from the mass of animals, right? Uh so that's why like on a on a uh beef uh uh a beef farm, they're not going to uh they're not gonna name the cows, right? Because they don't want to confer them a moral status. And then you they want them to say this mass, you know, maybe you assign them a number or something like that, but you want them to remain this kind of mass of animals rather than individuated animals with a moral status. So we can see how that aligns perfectly with a practice towards animals. So there's a linguistic practice and a material practice, and they correspond to one another. Uh I it might be a little too far to say that one, that a linguistic practice leads to the material practice, but there's a correspondence between the two.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

They shape each other.

Teddy Duncan Jr.

Yeah, and there isn't just a material practice. Uh, and the linguistic practice is like, oh, something on the side. It's like, no, in order for that material practice continue to perpetuate itself, there needs to be this linguistic practice. You can't have the material practice of treating animals that way with a different linguistic practice of like, you know, naming every animal and then conferring them a moral status, right?

Claudia Hirtenfelder

Do we have subconscious without language, or is that just um, yeah, like I don't know, is that because I know this is the the central claim now with Lacan, but is does that mean that language is central to feeling and subconscious, like how do emotions are supposed to fit into this?

Teddy Duncan Jr.

So this is a really interesting, and this is getting in the in the wheeze of psychoanalysis, but I like this question a lot, where uh a lot of people are gonna argue against this, and this is their argument against Lacan, is like his um his adherence to what was really big in you know the 50s and 60s and things like that, structuralism, uh, which is pretty much just an emphasis on a certain type of language with underlying structure that I don't have to get kind of too into. But with the unconscious, is it just language? For Lacan it is, and I adhere to the Lacanian view because of this. Think about um to use an animal example, think about you encounter a bear. Uh, and yeah, that's an emotional response. Like you're you're gonna see this bear and you're going to be afraid. But think of the way that the signifier bear plays into that interaction, right? Or if it's not even bear, think about whatever signifier goes through your uh mind, maybe predator, right? If you you see you see this thing in the dark and you think it's a bear, the signifier bear, we don't just have, as humans, anyways, uh we don't just have a pure emotional response. We don't have pure affect. We have affect mediated by language. Uh so when we experience that bear, I don't think that we just have a pure response to that bear. I think our response, like Lucan, is mediated through language. So I think this is interesting.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

I don't You're making my brain twinge now. Wait, hang on. So so so wait. So you're saying in order for the fear of the bear to even emanate, you would have to have the conception of the bear to come up into your mind in the first place.

Teddy Duncan Jr.

That the conception of bear informs your reaction to the bear. That your affective response is informed by language. We never, our entire reality is mediated by language. Lacan says that we uh we and we uh exist in the universe of the symbolic, which is the universe of the language, and we no longer have access to some pre symbolic reality that we did uh when we were infants. Like, yeah, at one point we had pre symbolic reality. Now, though, there's there's no such thing as that for us. We can posit it, we can try to conceptualize it, but we don't have access to it.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

Okay. Interesting. I'm happy you brought up infants there. Because I was about to say, like, what about kids before they before they're actually able to speak? I mean, they're able to hear and comprehend concepts long before they can speak. But yeah, I know we're supposed to be speaking about meat commodity now, but this is really interesting. Obviously, I haven't had enough psycho psychoanalysts. Oh my god, psychoanalysts. There we go.

Teddy Duncan Jr.

One other point on the on the kind of child, and this is, you know, I get a little bit in the weeds, but uh, you know, the pre-linguistic child, think about how when you're a baby, you don't even differentiate between me and my mother, me and the world, right? Uh there's a uh famous psychoanalyst named Melanie Klein who talks about kind of the the non-distinction between the the child and their mother, right? Like they don't distinguish between, they don't make they're not a self yet. They don't have an ego at that point. Lacan says they don't have an ego until they look in the mirror and they reck they they move. Uh an infant moves, looks in the mirror, recognizes that thing is me. I'm a I'm a distinct totality that is separate from the world. I'm one thing. Uh and then at that point is when they develop an ego. So there's like these these stages that you go through in like the pre-linguistic uh points. But then once we enter into language, uh that's kind of a uh uh the you're it's inaccessible to go back. You can never come back out of language.

Meat As Exchange Value

Claudia Hirtenfelder

Interesting. Um and I mean again, thinking about infants, uh I know a common uh something I've read a couple of times in in the literature is how children often don't separate animals and humans in the same way uh adults do. That's that we often as as kids tend to give the same kind of moral consideration or thought processes, or will include um, let's say, pets as family members just automatically, or pets uh or animals in their lives as friends, uh, whether they're live animals or even stuffy toys, they're given a certain level of significance that's that's different to the way in which adults would kind of create these divisions between myself and X or whatever it is. Um so yeah, okay. So I think I'm I'm kind of with you. And now this is one of your contributions in this book is that to understand the meat commodity, we need psychoanalysis. Well, not only to understand it, but that psychoanalysoanalysis. Oh my god, psychoanalysis is really useful in helping us to understand the meat commodity. Um you have a very specific understanding of meat commodity, and it's like meat hyphen commodity. I keep trying to say that. I don't know. It like because it it seems different to me in the common ways in which we speak about commodities. Uh so maybe you could tell us your conception of meat commodity now.

Teddy Duncan Jr.

Yeah, so uh and I did the hype because I do want to distinguish kind of what I'm thinking of the meat commodity and other people. So it's kind of a stylistic kind of uh distinction there with the hyphen. Uh, but I don't think you have to like say it or anything like that. But uh, you know, this we say the meat commodity. But um I I focused on the meat commodity so much, you know, the the insight that every other kind of animal studies person that's looked at uh, you know, the economic kind of side of things is that it is a commodity, right? It circulates for exchange value. And and I think other people have mentioned that, uh, but I think it's really important to understand that meat is something when it is a commodity, uh, that you circulate for exchange value, not for use value, which is like that fundamental Marxian distinction, right? Where like use value is the actual like use of something, so the value that it has for its use versus its exchange value, which is uh you know the amount of money that it can receive according to the labor put into it, right? So these are two very different things. And I think a lot of times, especially um in kind of our everyday colloquial understanding of uh meat and like the way we talk about meat, meat is thought of in terms of its use value, in terms of its utility as an item of sustenance. I think it's very important though to understand that anything within a capitalist economy, any commodity, circulates not for its use, not for its uh not for kind of the the purpose that it serves, but because it can uh it can make profit, right? It can it can produce revenue. So that's kind of a a really basic insight there, but I think it's really important that we talk about meat as an object of of nutrition or sustenance, right? Like that's the reason why it's uh eaten. And like, yeah, to some degree it is, but that's not the reason why it's produced. Uh so that that's very important. And I think this kind of brings in a new fracture from previous eras. Thinking about meat as a commodity is very different from uh, you know, someone hunting their own animals. And I don't mean that in a in even an ethical distinction. I mean that in a material, um it's a material distinction. Uh there's an entire different apparatus that produces the meat commodity versus, you know, the the uh the example I bring up is like my family in the hills of Kentucky uh a few generations ago, like killing deer and and squirrels to survive. That's a very different uh material practice than you know going to the superstore picking up some some sliced ham, right, for your sandwiches. That's an incidentally different encounter with the uh the animal and has an entire different like material apparatus that produces that. So I think that's really important. And the second reason why I think uh thinking of it in terms of a commodity is really important, and this comes from uh there's this, he's like a literary theorist named Roland Barth. And he has this book uh called Mythologies, uh, where he analyzes really interesting things and he considers them as texts, and this really informed the way I approach the meat commodity. So for instance, he reads like plastic, and he says plastic is the kind of premier item of our world because of the way it can be shifted into all of these different things, and that's exactly what we want to do in the world is have something that can uh, you know, an item that can serve all these different purposes that we can manipulate to our own ends. And he he was like reading not plastic itself, but the cultural uh the cultural meaning behind plastic. And that I think that's really important to not not just understand meat as uh, you know, this natural product that emerges, blah, blah, blah, but to denaturalize it, to understand that no, there's a certain uh cultural configuration that the meat commodity emerges from. It's not just a natural product uh that just appeared, it's something that is produced and there's a cultural meaning behind that production. So that's what I'm doing uh is I'm read-that's why it's called interpreting meat. I'm I'm reading the meat commodity as a text, kind of in that uh kind of in the same way Roland Bart did.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

But I suppose there are many ways you could read meat as a text, right? If you were in you know, I think you know, you could do a historical analysis. Certainly, a lot of people have done historical analyses of meat and the the production of meat and how we moved from butchering practices towards the industrialization of meat. Um, so how is what you're saying here different to that kind of like historical material analysis of meat?

Teddy Duncan Jr.

It's by bringing in those uh linguistic practices and then later in the book those kind of psychoanalytic practices. Uh so it's by understanding it not just as a material object, but again, the linguistic practices that correspond to it as a material object.

Why Holocaust Analogies Misfire

Claudia Hirtenfelder

Um So, what are some of those linguistic practices you speak to in the book? I know symptom is one of them that comes up. I know you talk about like a refusal of the analogy, which I think maybe you mentioned earlier. So why don't we get why don't we get into that, how analogies work with with regards to meat and understanding the production of meat? Um, because you you kind of speak about this distinction and how often uh how often violences that are done to humans are used as analogies to explain the violences done to animals. Uh so maybe you could talk us through how I suppose analogy and and then we'll go to symptom a little later. So let's start with analogy. How is this related to this linguistic understanding of meat commodity?

Teddy Duncan Jr.

Analogy is an interesting part of the book because it was kind of meant to be a detour uh to my point of looking at the specificity of animals. Because my whole point is we shouldn't do this kind of uh analogizing uh to understand animals. We shouldn't compare animal suffering and human suffering in order to understand animal suffering or kind of the the uh apparatus of meat production, but we should look at it in its specificity, kind of like what I was saying earlier. And that was meant to just be a detour to like my main point. Uh, but it's you know, the uh there's been like reviews of it and things like that. And a lot of people, uh, that was a really important part of the book to them. Because it's a big thing in the in the uh animal studies community and like activism and things like that to make uh analogies between animal and and human suffering.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

Yeah, I mean it's been widely critiqued, of course, um with good reason, but I think something you say that's important in that chapter is that you say animal suffering needs to be understood on its own terms, which is something we seem to struggle with. And part of me thinks that this is perhaps part of that subconscious struggle that you're speaking about.

Teddy Duncan Jr.

Yes. Uh and to to to get in like the specifics of like the analogy that I was arguing against, because I'm looking specifically at slaughterhouses, uh, and it's the the slaughterhouse holocaust analogy. And I was saying people have made very good arguments for there being historical and technological continuity between these things, right? That, hey, there are slaughterhouses and then Fordism, uh, which was informed by slaughterhouses, and those uh, you know, to some degree informs uh, you know, the concentration camps, right? So there's continuity between these things. X led to Y, which led to Z. Uh, but I think it it's very different to say something led to something else, right, in this indirect or direct sense, uh, or to say that something is like something else. I think those are qualitatively two completely different things to say. Um and I don't deny that there's a historical and technological continuity between all these things. I denied the rhetorical utility in appealing to that uh for a lot of which is a value judgment, which is two very different things. Uh where I don't think it's very appealing. First off, think about someone that uh that eats meat currently and what you're saying to them when you compare those two things. I mean you're indirectly, you're you're you're calling them like a like a Nazi or something like that, right? And I don't think that's a very uh effective way in like an activistic sense to kind of bring people in, right? But uh aside from that, I just don't think that these things uh are alike. I I don't think that they are the same because these things emerge for different reasons. Like we have uh, you know, anti-Semitism, which is why uh, you know, in in issues in Europe and things like that, like that's where uh the the Holocaust emerges from, right? Like so if you want to understand that, you need to understand uh Judaism, uh European history, I mean, all of these things, right? Uh anti-Semitism, all of all of that, Nazism and all of that. That's very different from understanding a slaughterhouse. There's a whole different kind of uh range of tools I think you should employ to properly understand a slaughterhouse. And those are that's what I'm saying is I'm not gonna compare these things because I'm gonna use these tools to understand this specific practice, to understand this specific material uh object of the meat commodity. So that's why I distance myself from analogy in that way.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

Yeah, I mean, I again I think an important contribution there is saying, I mean, I agree with you, there are shared technologies and shared practices, and there is also sometimes shared timelines. There's reasons why some of these intensive practices emerge in different spaces at the same time. So 100% there's definitely connections between these different I mean, even yeah, castral technologies shift across spaces. Barbed wire was originally used on farms and then was used in prisons, right? Like so to draw those connections, I don't think I think that's uh empirical, right? You've you've found that there are these technological connections. But I do think it's something special to try and actually comprehend and understand the subjects who are implicated in these systems, right? So to consider um people that are caught up in genocides, genocidal situations now and what are the empirical material, social cultural conditions for that um and how they experience that, right, in a given moment in time, because that also shifts across time. And the same is said for animals. Uh and and I wonder what you think here. Do you think that maybe you run the risk in your book of flattening slaughterhouses, of making all slaughterhouses one and the same? Because you don't really in the book kind of bring any sort of geographical specificity, because this is a theoretical operation, right? So you speak about the kind of specificity of um humans here, and maybe I'm doing exactly the same kind of comparison that you're you're arguing against. But I don't know. Do we afford that same kind of specificity when it comes to understanding animals and different slaughterhouses, how slaughterhouses have been mobilized and set into place in different parts of the world? Um, or do you think that there are generally standardized?

Teddy Duncan Jr.

So that's a that's a really interesting question. And I kind of approach that in a really specific way, and it is uh theoretical, right? Which is why I'm not looking at like specific uh slaughterhouses and kind of trying to understand the history of uh, you know, I bring in some historical analysis, but it's not a large part of the book. And the reason why I did that is because I think there are a lot of books and like documentaries and things like that that will tell you precisely what happens in slaughterhouses, their kind of emergence and things like that. Like that will kind of show you the horrors of them. Uh and I want to distance myself from that just a little bit, uh, because I I think that that kind of uh showing the horrific side of things has been done. And I also wanted to approach things a little bit more, and this is uh not only partially, right? I approach things a little bit more objectively, uh, if possible. Uh so to not kind of have this uh you know appeal to like look at this kind of specific thing that happens in slaughterhouses and things like that, but rather let's kind of take a step back and look at it as like a wider structure. And one other thing I I wanted to mention, and in um uh in your response when you're talking about like uh flattening and things like that and kind of looking at specificity, the reason why I also moved away from analogy is because what analogy is trying to do is saying, look, animal suffering is like us, therefore it is worthy of a moral status. I I think the turn should actually be, hey, look, animals are uh have a uniqueness. They have a difference from us. And despite this complete radical otherness that like we can't even we can't understand what it's like to be an animal. Uh despite that otherness, they are still uh deserve an ethical status, right? Not because they are alike us, but in their very difference from us. And other scholars like Carrie Wolfe and things like that uh have said that. But that's really important to me, that we don't need to appeal to humanness for animals to be worthy of an ethical status.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

Yeah, 100%. I think that's often a call, but I would say um, for me at least, I think that we need to appeal to both sets, um, recognizing similarities and differences. Uh, because there are, we are also, for the longest time, that kind of bringing up of difference between humans and other animals has worked to sustain and create some of these systems, right? Um, but it's it's kind of finding a way to respect and appreciate them as different beings that literally experience the world in different ways, you know, have different kinds of eyesights, different kinds of smells, uh phenomenologically, another word I can never say, um, who who literally experience the world in ways. What's that common saying? Differences, it's not a difference of um Oh, degree is of kind or kind.

Teddy Duncan Jr.

Not a difference of degree, non difference of kind is a difference of degree.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

Exactly. And I think depending on the animal and depending on the situation, I think there are different extents to which uh, you know, perhaps some forms of anthropomorphism and and anthrop uh anthropomorphism can work to help understand animals' behavior and what they could be going through. But I think there are also uh different moments in which to appeal to their differences. So uh, for example, you know, as a mammal being hit, you know, we have shared biological responses. So I can respond to the fact that a cow who's being hit might experience uh a certain degree of pain, but I can't understand how cows are able to smell urine and process fear from con specifics. Like that's not something that's accessible to me. Um would you would you agree with that? Or you're very much of the difference of the set, like we should not be appealing to sameness at all.

Teddy Duncan Jr.

It's there's nothing wrong with recognition of sameness. There's nothing wrong with saying, hey, there's commonality between me and the animal and our uh you know experience of the world, right? Our experience of pain and things like that. My uh difference on that would be kind of uh uh the ethical like principle of it isn't, we shouldn't need to appeal to humanity in order for something to have an ethical status. Because you see, uh, you know, the lower you get down, the the further you get from a commonality between a human and an animal, the less uh, the less uh the less that animal the less it is regarded as a kind of a certain like personhood or kind of whatever you want to call it, a certain conferred a real like ethical status, right? If you're going to appeal to humanity, then the further you get from humanity, the less that animal is going to regard it as uh worthy of an certain like ethical status.

Meat As Capitalism’s Symptom

Claudia Hirtenfelder

Yeah, their their suffering or their experience or their entanglement in whatever system needs to be respected and understood for itself, not for its um its implications for humans or the our shared experience. Yes, I'm with you. Um okay, so another thing you mentioned that's central to your book, and I have to say this was something I struggled with. I think I was with you at the beginning, and I was like, okay, I think I'm there. And then at some point I just kind of lost. Um was your conversation around meat as a symptom or animal as a symptom? So could you walk me through that a little bit?

Teddy Duncan Jr.

So yeah. So I think we can think about symptom in in the first uh kind of really clickable use of the word symptom, right? You can think of the definition that Zizek gives is uh Schlavoj Zizek. He says a symptom is something that's heterogeneous to a given homogeneity, right? Uh to something that's homogenous. So it's something that sticks out, right? And think of uh in our everyday use of the word, something like sneeze, right? Like you have a sick, like you have a cold and you sneeze. There's a normal operation of the body, right? Uh something that is homogenous, right, in its operations, it's supposed to operate a certain way, and there's this thing that sticks out, there's heterogeneity that kind of sticks out of that, which is the sneeze. So that you know, that indicates that you're sick. Uh so that's what I, you know, that's the everyday use of symptoms. And then you can kind of move on to what kind of implications that has for capitalism, and then what kind of psychoanalytic uh implications that has. So for capitalism, GJC uses some examples of things that capitalism is supposed to offer, right? It's this homogeneous system that's supposed to offer certain things, and then it there are these things that stick out that can't be offered. So think about freedom. One big thing under capitalism is the freedom that it's supposed to offer. And I would like to say this, I'm not even like uh anti-capitalist, like I'm not like a socialist or anything like that. I think that anyone can make uh uh criticism of capitalism, like even someone that is like a free market capitalist or whatever, like that, right? But you know, capitalism offers uh freedom, for instance. It says you can choose any job that you want. You're not, you know, you're you you're not a feudal, you know, you're not like working on someone's land or something like that. You have you enter in a contract with someone. But Zizek says, well, like look at the way freedom actually operates, where if you have a job and you know you don't you need that job in order to live, can you really leave that job, right? So there's this thing that sticks out about freedom. Like, yes, I am free, but I uh have certain obligations that need to be met through working, right? So like is that really freedom? So there's this thing about freedom that sticks out, even though capitalism offers freedom, right? And I think the animal the me commodity also sticks out in that same way. Because what is a commodity supposed to be? It's supposed to be the result of an object-to-object conversion. We have uh, you know, in the very basic like Marxian definition, we have a raw material that is converted into an object. Of course, things get more complicated than that now. Uh, but the the promise is that it's always an object to an object. It's not supposed to be a subject to an object. And in the contemporary world, I mean, even if you're even if practically everyone, right, like outside of animal studies, I think most people will recognize it to some degree, in like the Tom Reagan sense that like an animal is a subject of a life, right? That they are a subject. So there's something that sticks out about the meat commodity. And again, like this goes back to having conversations with people. If you talk to someone about meat, there's a certain uh defensiveness that emerges, right? There's something that sticks out about it, even if someone, I mean, people have very cogent uh uh arguments for meat, uh, you know, if you talk to people. Uh but there's something that sticks out, it's something that has to be definitely about it. Why is that? Well, it's something heterogeneous that sticks out from a system of like normal operations, right? There's something that sticks out and is different about it. So that it's a symptom in that sense.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

And I suppose there are many ways in which these symptoms can manifest. Because I mean, as as you were talking, I was thinking that same kind of defensiveness, depending on the group you're speaking to, could emerge around that classic object, object to commodity situation. So, right, let's say, I don't know, it's someone who's buying now a plastic something or X that's no longer really accepted. And people do, they'll then justify, right? Before even being asked to justify their choice for that product, they'll justify it. Oh no, but I really needed it for whatever reason. Or to some, like in some circles, I think Amazon is emerging as this, right? Like Amazon is kind of a picture perfect example of capitalism operating as moving uh objects around the world, commodities making money. I mean, Jeff B is also, you got all the nice capitalist bits and box. There. But in some circles, if someone now buys something on Amazon, they or they don't even mention that they use Amazon because it's like making use of Amazon has become problematic, right? Would that also be a symptom, or is that something else? Uh, you know, is that is that kind of defensiveness to own up to that also a symptom of capitalism?

Teddy Duncan Jr.

I think it could, maybe in a different sense. Because what I mean when I say, and I think symptom can be like applied in a lot of different ways. What I mean when I call the me commodity a symptom is there's something that's not even, it doesn't even meet the c the definition almost of commodity. Uh and what I mean by that is that a commodity, again, offers as an object being converted into an object. It's some like raw material. An animal isn't a raw material. So by that definition, it is not what I would even, in a certain definition, it's not even definitionally a uh a commodity. So it kind of sticks out as not even being a proper commodity of something that doesn't even do what a commodity should be doing, right? Or what a commodity should be, I guess.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

So my question then becomes are you analyzing meat or analyzing animals here? Because if you're analyzing meat, for many people, meat is in and of itself an object, right? So for some, the kind of conversion process would start from meat, but then you're just getting meat to meat, because the raw material is the animal here. That's what you're saying. So any other commodity, you would have um, I don't know, I'm trying to think of a simple commodity, a pencil, right? That's got lead inside it, or at one point did. So lead and wood are the raw commodities, and they are, you know, through labor and through practice, they're converted into something else that is then sold as another object, a pencil, that will bring in profit. But here you're saying that our whole understanding of animals as a resource, as a raw material, is incorrect because they are not just uh objects uh in terms of like raw materials. They are thinking feeding experiential subjects, which means that that conversion process is inaccurate.

Teddy Duncan Jr.

I I think you you absolutely got it. And think about it, it's almost like a promise that a commodity is making. A commodity is saying this is something that serves a subject, right? This is an object that serves a subject. Well, the the entire idea of the meat commodity subverts that because it's a subject that is converted into an object and then you know goes to humans, right? So of course, I but I think for most people, we consider to some degree again uh animals as subjects. So that promise is kind of broken uh with the with the meat commodity.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

So do you think this is why there is that kind of need for to go back to what we were talking about earlier for consciousness raising? Because in in people's minds, in their in their kind of imaginaries of how objects and subjects move through the world, while we kind of have a loose understanding of, and I mean I think this applies to many animal commodities, we have a loose understanding of animals being in our commodities. We don't necessarily make a connection, we buy the commodity, right? So when you see meat, you see meat. You don't see a pig or a cow or a chicken, even in instances where they share the same name. Even when chicken is called chicken, you you fundamentally just have a different understanding in your mind of this because this is an object in front of you.

Teddy Duncan Jr.

Yes, and and this is where I think the concept of disavowal comes in, uh, which is really important. Because the thing is, and we were talking about children earlier. Maybe a child doesn't know that the chicken nuggets were chicken, right? Like they they actually might not have that conception at a certain age, right? Uh of course, like in the prelinguistic stage, uh they they don't have that. But an adult, we know that the you know that the hamburger is a cow, you know that the chicken nuggets are chicken. And think about the things that remind us of that. Um so for instance, in um in uh in in America, like Chick-fil-A, right? Like Chick Chick-fil-A, they use the the cows, right? Are you familiar with Chick-fil-A?

Claudia Hirtenfelder

Um, I read about it in the book with your ad companions. This is what you're going to. Yeah.

Teddy Duncan Jr.

Yeah, it's a good but uh, you know, they have uh their whole advertisement thing are these cows that say eat chicken, right? And because you save the cows. They don't serve uh beef, right? That's the entire thing about Chick-fil-A. They don't serve beef, so you're saving the cow by eating the chicken. And the, you know, the the cows uh they're they're kind of funny advertisements, though, but they do say uh, you know, eat chicken uh because they want to save their own lives, right? That is an explicit reminder of what is going on there, right? Like you can't eat that chicken and not know uh that you know, if you're familiar with the advertisements at least, that they're you're consuming something that previously was a chicken.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

Like that seven- I feel like there's knowing and there is knowing. Uh and and and and there there is something, there is like, and and maybe this is where that emotional dimension or that kind of affective dimension that we were talking about earlier comes in. Because I think because it's so normal and accepted, you can sometimes see it and be aware. You've you're aware that animals are implicated, but I don't think that you really, and I think this is where some of the rhetorical strategies that activists use, like comparing pigs to um dogs, for example, are trying to actually get you to see that. Yes, you understand that you know, pigs are your pork, but do you really understand? Like, do you really see uh pigs as these complex, intelligent beings that are, I mean, would you subject your dog to the same experiences that you subject your dinner to? For many people, they would find this completely objectionable. And you see this in the kind of oftentimes American response to uh Asian consumption of dogs, which is completely incoherent if you if you if you're eating any other sort of animal. Like it doesn't make sense, it's purely a cultural response there. Um but I I think uh yeah, there there is a difference between seeing and seeing. And I've mentioned it a couple of times on on the the podcast. For me, I think I mean I went vegan, I was like all for it. Uh, you know, I'm not gonna eat meat anymore, I'm I'm not gonna do these things, but I still don't even think I saw uh animals until I think at least six months or so in, and I came across a single fish in a tank whose chin was completely raw from rubbing up against the tank. And something happened where I saw that fish. And that's a different that's a different knowing or actually I think appreciation of the significance of that connection between the animal and the commodity.

Teddy Duncan Jr.

That's a very and that that's such a good point about like seeing and not seeing, and that's exactly uh kind or similar to what I mean by disavow, right? Disavow uh uh is very similar to what someone well people like call a cognitive dissonance, right? Where there's this incommensurate things, and then there's the so you know there's you loving animals, right? Which I in my I'm a hyper optimistic, I think most people really love animals uh and that they really care for them and they care for their well-being. So there's that, and then there's the consumption of meat, right? So a lot of times people talk about that in terms that in terms of cognitive dissonance. Like there's two, these two things that are incommensurate, uh, and you that's the cognitive dissonance is the experience of that tension. Disaval is a little bit different, where there's this reality that you know. You know that meat results in uh or that meat is the result of animal death. And then on the other hand, you have this belief where you love animals, but you can you continue to do these practices, you you continue to eat the meat. How is that possible? So I think what disavowal uh answers is the kind of fundamental question of how can someone eat meat and love animals? How is that, these two things, how can that be reconciled? And disavowal says it's a rejection of a part of reality. So uh there's a fantasy that intervenes, reality is rejected in order for this practice to continue. So an example uh that I cite in the book is like money, right? Like we all know that money is just this piece of paper, this inert property. Uh and this is just Swabor Zizek's example, actually. Uh, we know it's just a piece of paper, it has no magical properties, but we act as if it has these magical properties, right? Like if someone throws money into a crowd, you're going to like, you know, be scrambling on the floor for it, like it has those magical properties, even though we know uh, you know, it's only given that proper that uh, you know, the value through the government and things like that, right? That it's really just a piece of paper. Well, with uh there's a certain there's a rejection of reality that happens in order for you to operate like money has that magical value, right? Like you have to reject knowing this is just a piece of paper in order to act as if money has this kind of supernatural kind of significance to it. Same thing happens with meat, where someone says, uh, I know that this results in animals, but then there's this kind of normally it's like a fact or something that tries to ratify the action. So something like, uh, but you know, the the circle of life, right? And because of that, right, there's a circle of life, so you know, animals eat other animals, so therefore I continue to eat meat. And you kind of sever off this piece of reality that you know is true. You know that the uh that the meat is the result of the death of an animal, and you love that animal, right? Or you love the animals and you care for their well-being. But there's that part of reality is just kind of lobbed off, it's completely severed. And so you can continue the action, you can perpetuate the.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

And this is a subconscious practice here, right? Like now we're speaking, so here we're again within the realm, because this is Julia Christiva, right? I know she also speaks a lot about disavowal, the kind of um yeah. I mean, I think for her, she also speaks about how that disavowal, the pushing away, that projection you speak of also shapes who you are. Even if you don't want it to, even in the very act of trying to reject something that shapes who you are, uh it somehow, uh I mean, you're you're much more of an expert than I am, but I really enjoyed powers of horror. Um, yeah, she's she's amazing. But yeah, so this is happening at a subconscious level. So at the conscious level, at the rational understanding level, you understand and comprehend that animals are meat, but at the subconscious level, some sort of mechanism operates that allows you to perpetuate a fantasy that that's not really what's happening.

Teddy Duncan Jr.

You got it, exactly. The only kind of small intervention I would make is uh is like it's unconscious rather than subconscious, because subconscious is something that you can access, but isn't just immediately at the surface, right? Like conscious is what you're thinking about currently. Subconscious, we can call like pre-conscious or something like that, like something you could access, but you're not currently reflecting on. And then unconscious, and I know like uh there's a sometimes like conflation between those two, but like unconscious is something you really don't have access to, right? Like it's something you can't Can you ever have access to it? It can be brought up.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

Uh it I mean, like us talking about it now, isn't that accessing it?

Teddy Duncan Jr.

Or uh it's not accessing our own. Uh like like for instance, like if if we were talking, if we were talking to a meat eater, they would probably uh someone that I hate saying the term meat eater, sorry, uh, but someone that eats meat, uh, they would probably reject this, right? Like they would say that isn't what's operating here. Well, they're not accessing this this kind of like they're talking about it, sure, uh, but they're not actually like accessing it and taking it serious.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

So we've all got these kind of blind spots that help us maintain perhaps systems, practices that we don't necessarily believe in or agree with. Uh, and I think, I mean, this is an important point for many reasons, right? Like when we sit at a particular historical moment, we tend to look back at people in their past and say, how could they have ever done eggs, right? How could you have ever done why? But really, um, we're operating with a different system, a different understanding uh, you know, of how things operate. And this same thing happens, I guess, across cultures. When you look at another group and you say, well, how could you do X? You're operating with different systems of understanding, perhaps different ways of rejecting and accepting stuff that you don't even know what's going on. So is that fair? Like, so yeah.

Teddy Duncan Jr.

Yeah, and and I think uh to kind of revise a little bit what I said about not having access to the unconscious, I would say what I'm referring to here, yes, is on the individuated level, but it's also on like the cultural intersubjective level. Like this is across uh a list of people, like we think about this culturally. This is something that's occurring that isn't uh, you know, explicitly stated, right? It's not really if someone had to articulate their views, uh they wouldn't bring up uh this kind of disavow that's occurring, right? Uh that there's this kind of severance between their belief and their actions. Uh so it's not so much that like they have like complete in access to it, but like we look wide culturally, it's something that isn't reflected upon, uh, I guess. And like and of course, individual could reflect on that, right? So it isn't like totally inaccessible, I guess I should, I should say. Uh but yeah, I mean it's certainly something that's happening across a beyond just the individuated level of like one person, this person, it's something that we can see across an entire uh you know population of people.

Jouissance The Thrill Of Meat

Claudia Hirtenfelder

Um oh god, okay, no wait. We're already almost in an hour. I've got so many other questions because now I want to like get into the realm of the norm, right? Because you're saying this happens on a large level, and now of course I'm thinking, well, this is how norms operate, norms function, and they they have different cultural um but this is me and my Foucault thinking. Uh that's like the only like only philosopher I know and I love, and I'm like, I'm I'm tethered to him now, and that's just the way my my brain operates. Um, but I mean there are taken for granted norms, and and I think it's a struggle, so to talk about whether we can see what we take for granted. I don't think it's inherently an oxymoron, but I do think it requires a substantial amount of struggle, a substantial amount of like hearing what you don't want to hear and accepting it. And that acceptance isn't um it doesn't come naturally.

Teddy Duncan Jr.

And this is where things maybe get, but I think this is a really, and this is like where I think my real kind of intervention was, is that it's not just there's this symptom that sticks out that makes people uncomfortable, so they disavow reality in order to, and what I mean by that thing that sticks out is the meat commodity, right? The meat commodity sticks out as a symptom. Someone disavows reality, and what part of reality they're disavowing is the the fact that they care for animals, they love animals, uh, you know, they're probably uh proponents of things like animal abuse laws and things like that, right? But they have to disavow that kind of part of reality. This this thing results in the death of an animal and the suffering that I'm ultimately against. But what's really interesting that psychoanalysis brings in, specifically like Lacan and uh Zizek does this on a cultural scale, is that we don't want to get away from our symptoms. We enjoy our symptoms, which is kind of the radical part of this. Like, yeah, uh we don't like this kind of uh to think of like a classic like uh psychoanalytic example, like we don't like this repetitive example that I mean this repetitive behavior that like we're engaging in over and over again, or this obsessive behavior that we're engaging in. But we have a certain attachment to it. We enjoy our symptom in this kind of perverse way, right? Uh, which is uh what we call like jucance. It's like enjoyment of something despite the fact that it's not really enjoyable. Uh like the enjoyment beyond enjoyment is what I call it. So, like, for instance, the example I bring up to the book is like someone scratching an itch to the point of like bleeding. Like you just keep scratching it. There's a certain enjoyment that you're deriving from that despite the fact that it's an unenjoyable experience. And I think there's something similar that happens with meat. Uh, and that's why I kind of use the Chick-fil-a example. Why do restaurants use the animal as the mascot? This is like my theory doesn't really make sense in that, right? Oh, you're disavowing reality of of what meat really is. But there are all these restaurants that, you know, they serve barbecue and they have they have a pig, right? That doesn't make sense in my conception of things.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

Sorry, it's interrupt you there, but I think perhaps they are, because the representation of the pig they're giving you, or the cow they're giving you, is often an anthropomorphized, they're not showing you slaughterhouse images, right? They're not, they're not, that's a different representation, they're playing a rhetoric trick on you to some extent.

Teddy Duncan Jr.

Yeah, and and I think that's part of it, but then also is that the meat commodity sticks out as as a symptom, right? There's an enjoyment of that, of this kind of perverse enjoyment of what should not be enjoyed. I the mascot uh of the pig brings another kind of enjoyment. Not just the gastronomic enjoyment of uh of like eating the meat, right? Which you know, taste is something undeniable. There's an enjoyment there, and that's a straightforward enjoyment. But the kind of uh perverse enjoyment of some enjoying something despite knowing that it's a symptom. My kind of formulation would be uh, and again, like this is referring to Zhizac, he has this book called For They Know They Know, for they know what they do, right? So it's not for they know not what they do, for they know what they do, and they do it anyway, right? Uh there's this thing that no you shouldn't be engaging in, right? Because you have this uh this ethical belief towards animals that I think most people hold. But you in but you enjoy that thing despite that fact, because of that fact.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

And it makes it all the more better because you're breaking the rules.

Teddy Duncan Jr.

Because, yeah, and there's this kind of transgressive element to it, and that's the jucence of eating meat, of enjoying something, not just for the gastronomic enjoyment, which again you can't deny, like you know, enjoyment of taste or something like that, but because it is a symptom that sticks out, and there's this kind of ethical problem with it.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

Okay, so I'm gonna give you two examples here, right? And it's it's it's often easy to come up with examples of how people do enjoy meat. And I want to know if this is both of them operate as an example of jus sang. Okay, whatever. I don't say it right either.

Teddy Duncan Jr.

I want to say right now, I try my best, I don't say it right. Forgive me.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

I I literally say at some point the other day, my husband came to me and was like, you really do have to learn how to say speciesm correctly, because I've been doing this podcast for years, and at some point it's no longer cute. And I was like, I'm not trying to be cute, okay? But no. Anyway, um, okay, so let's say two hypothetical random examples that are totally understandable and relatable, I think, to many vegans or vegetarians out there. So you've got a friend who sits with you at lunch and actively will order a vegan meal with you and sit and talk about how you know they're changing their diet, they're eating less meat. This is there's often a confessional kind of element to it. Uh, and they are very clearly aware of the fact that meat is a challenge. And later on in the afternoon, they go and they're sitting with another friend and they get themselves, I don't know, some sort of meaty dish, and they snark saying, at least I'm not with the vegan now, or whatever it is, right? They say, like, you know, there's there's something in that snarkiness and that response that adds to the enjoyment of the meat that they know that they're transgressing, right? So you've got that one as an example, and then you've got perhaps the example of, which I think is a rising tendency now, of uh particularly coupled with uh a kind of masculinity and an identification of masculinity, of saying, I'm gonna eat, not only am I gonna eat meat, I'm gonna eat even more meat as a resistance to veganism, right? As a resistance to um the the emergence of this idea that we shouldn't eat meat. So are both of these an example of jus, or yes, I I I think so.

Teddy Duncan Jr.

And uh those are, I wish I would talk to you while I was writing the book. Those are both great examples. Like those are so, those are so, I mean, especially like the the first one, uh, like of someone like that enjoyment afterwards, right? Of and and the person has admitted, like, even that they they know this and then they enjoy it despite that knowledge. And I don't even want to say despite, it's because of that knowledge, which is a radical way of approaching it, but I think that it's it's true. And I I want to make this clear. I'm a hyper optimistic person. I don't think someone does this because uh they're a bad person. Again, I think the person loves I believe that uh all almost nearly all the population really loves animals and really cares for their well-being, right? And I know people are a little bit more pessimistic about that, but that's that's really what I believe. Um but they I mean that's just how the symptom functions, is there's just something that is off, there's this heterogeneous point, right, that you enjoy because of that. You enjoy it because it sticks out for the very sake of that. And I don't think that has anything to do with you know someone being uh unethical or or bad or or evil or anything like that. I think that's just kind of unconscious uh mechanisms at play.

Dairy Eggs And The Farm Fantasy

Claudia Hirtenfelder

Okay, I'm sorry to do this, but I'm I'm I have to do it because it's sitting at the back of my head. Um do you think a similar thing operates with you and dairy consumption?

Teddy Duncan Jr.

Oh, that's a that's a really good question. That's a it's okay. I'll I'll say this.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

And I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to like really, I'm not trying to do like vegan shaming or blaming here. This is just a genuine, you know, as someone who really understands how the production of meat and the use of animals operates, uh how does how does milk then sit in this conception of of that?

Teddy Duncan Jr.

So I have one thing I'll say for the for the book side of things. Again, the book I didn't bring in it because I wanted to focus on a specific commodity. So like that's why I didn't bring in meat. And I mentioned that in the conclusion and things like that. Where like I wasn't rejecting the, it was just, hey, I want to look at the specificity of this commodity. But I I will say, in my life, I'm very split on this. And uh for for one reason. I don't think, and and this is my personal view, I don't think you could ethically consume meat unless you were, you know, you can bring up these like edge scenarios, right? Of like you're alone on an island, you sustain your life, like blah blah blah. You don't really need to get into that, right? But like I don't think you can ethically consume meat uh in this day and age, and then where we live. I don't need to go to the supermarket when I have tofu right next to it, right? Um with milk products though, uh, and I want to get kind of your your view on this. With milk products, I I have nothing personally wrong with extracting milk from an animal or uh extracting uh, you know, I I did this thing once where I lived on a farm for two weeks, and like in exchange for your labor, you get to like live there, and like I saw like the eggs. Well, there's nothing wrong with getting an egg uh from a chicken, right? And these chickens were treated well. So the issue isn't uh principled against milk and eggs, but I'm very aware that when I go to the supermarket, I bury milk and eggs. Eggs, what occurs after that? So that's why I'm so split on this. I don't think it's the same thing as meat, where there's it's a principled stance against meat. I think that there are in certain circumstances, uh, you know, if I lived on a farm with cows and eggs, it would be perfectly fine for me to drink that milk uh and eat those eggs. Uh I would have no ethical issue with that. But when I go to the supermarket, I'm very aware that there's an ethical issue there. And that's where I'm very, very split on.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

And I suspect there's a fantasy, to use your words here, of course. Of living on a farm happening, right? There's there's a there's a symptom. You're using a symptom and you're using a fantasy to justify that to some extent, because really, if we're talking about it, any milk and eggs are also commodities, and to make them function and to look at them as the specificity of them to make them function requires massive amounts of breeding practices. You know, it's not just about the commodity, it's not just that those chickens and those cows will also become meat, right? That they're intimately tied with the meat commodity itself, but even just the creation of the milk and the creation of the eggs are inherently tied to um to production practices, to breeding practices. So, so what the chicken is, there's a fantasy idea of the chicken and the farm that's not sustained in that era. I mean, we've all got these things that operate and function in in different ways, but we find mechanisms to justify it. And it's it's subversive to I mean, I'm I imagine when you first went vegetarian, it wasn't a like an easy, it's not it's not an easy transition, right? It's not something that's just apparent. Like I really struggled with the the the yeah, I don't know. Um I mean I'm I'm very aware of meeting people where they're at, uh, because I think for most of us, we don't we're really content with our lives and we just want to keep living, right?

Teddy Duncan Jr.

And it's it's interesting because in the book I talk about like the fantasy of uh, you know, like organic meat on like small farms, like someone like goes to a farm and buys their meat, and I called that uh I had a good phrase, but something like uh fetishized pre-commodification, right? Where like you're you're saying, like, oh, this isn't going through the market, it's not circulating, I'm not buying it in the supermarket, and there's like a feticization of that, right? Like, oh, I'm getting it from here, not here. Uh, and I was critical. I'm like, well, this is the same thing. There's still the issue of the subject being killed, right? Uh the difference I would make though is my my feticization of the of the uh the pre-commodification, I would actually have no ethical principle uh difference. What the issue is though that there's a fantasy of me living on a farm with uh called and chickens uh outside of the actual circulation of uh cowl chicken.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

I mean, okay, so to go back to your theoretical point here, you were saying so, because earlier on you spoke about the meat commodity in terms of the Marxian kind of symptom, is is this general kind of shift from raw materials that become commodities, right? Objects becoming objects, not subjects becoming objects. And I guess if I'm hearing you here, you're saying, well, in terms of milk and eggs, it's again object becoming object, not subject becoming object. But it's it is a fantasy to deny that subjects are inherently involved in that object creation, right? Like they are massive, experience is involved in the creating of milk and eggs.

Teddy Duncan Jr.

It's it with the fantasy, the it's a fantasy to deny that the current circulation of milk and eggs uh in in a capitalist economy, or like, I mean, any any any economy in the world, right, uh has suffering of animals within it, right? If you could operate outside of that, now that's the difference with me, is that if you operate outside of that uh economy, I still think there's an issue with me. I don't think operating outside of that would be an issue with eggs and milk, but I'm not operating outside of that, right? So there's there is a positive uh kind of uh a fantasy there.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

Yeah, yeah. Um well thank you so much for for being generous and really bending my brain. Um yeah, I you know I did some reading and psychoanalysis in in my my master's when I looked at policing, and I was really great, uh, really interesting. And then I like dropped it and um yeah, I feel like you've just given me a crash course and a whole bunch of different ideas. So thank you for being so generous and clear with those. Um, we're gonna close up soon. Uh perhaps you could tell us your quote.

The Lacanian Real And Avoidance

Teddy Duncan Jr.

Yes, and this actually perfect because I the links to uh an idea that I I want to bring in right here at the end. Uh so this is from I have her book right here, and I'm not gonna say it right, but it's Noli Vales. It's a a French Animal to Edible? Yes, Animal to Edible from Noli Vales, I think is her name. I know I'm mispronouncing it. I don't know.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

Again, one person, okay. Yeah.

Teddy Duncan Jr.

Uh but this is the quote, and it's really a wonderful quote. Um, it is as if the initial separation between killing and meat has triggered a process of repeated fissions, forming a kind of spiral of avoidance of a reality and meaning that are too raw, the center of the spiral behind it, being the very thing that it's trying to avoid for forever, unsuccessfully, and for good reason. And that's from uh the book Animal to Edible. And I think that is that that specifically that phrase, spiral of avoidance, that something is being avoided at kind of the center of everything uh that can't be contended with. And this brings me into the the kind of last concept uh that I wanted to talk about, which is the the real, which is a Lacanian concept of something that is uh pretty much, you can think of the real as something that's traumatic, something that kind of uh uh penetrates into language. Because you think about what is something when it's traumatic? It's something that can't be put into words, it's something that exceeds language, right? Like some what is some traumatic event? It's something that you can't put words into, right? Uh like think the the example I use in the book is like in America, like 9-11, right? No matter how many documentaries, no matter how many books, no matter how many stories, there's something in 9-11 that can never be named. That's why we use a date for it. We don't call it the terrorist attack. We say we just apply the date that it occurred, right, as a proxy for this thing in it that can never really be named, this traumatic element. And I think in animals, uh, or in animal slaughter and meat and everything like that, there is a reel there that can never be named. Uh and it's interesting to think about this in both ways. In the, for someone that eats meat, you might have the absent referent, right? Where they say uh pork rather than pig. Well, there's an obvious kind of avoidance of a of a reel there that can't be contended with, and it's the reel of slaughter of the living animal. But think about it on the other end too, of the animal activist that tries to say uh, you know, animal flesh instead of meat, or tries to say cow carcass or something like that that explicitly names it. Even when you try to explicitly name that thing, the the kind of the trauma of slaughter, there's something in it that can never be named. There's something in it that always exceeds that, no matter what naming practices that you try to apply to it, right? Either way, it's unsuccessful trying to name that. And that kind of brings together the the linguistic part of this. That at the core of this is of meat, uh, of the meat commodity is something that always exceeds linguistic practices that can never properly be named because it is traumatic. And that is the slaughter and suffering of the animal that can never be contended with. And this is made even worse by the fact that the thing, you know, the the uh the the the purse or how the subject that suffers, animals don't have access to, you know, what I would call like human language in order to articulate their suffering. So there's this even more kind of uh distance between us and this thing that's the the animal that suffers that we can never kind of properly understand. Uh and that's the real kind of at the core of this. And that's why that quote and specifically that phrase spiral of avoidance is so important because there's this thing that's forever being avoided, no matter how much you try to properly name it or understand it.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

Would this only apply to a traumatic event? Or because you know, I can think of other experiences that seem to defy language, where I can't, I mean, this podcast is an example, every concept I talk about, I I'll never quite get all of the concepts, right? Like I get approximations of the concepts, but I I can never get to the real of what the concept is, as it were. But more perhaps more tangibly, okay, I can I can get at a traumatic event. How do you ever explain what you've gone through? Like it seems to exceed your language. But so too does all, right? Like if I'm standing on top of a mountain and I'm seeing just the most beautiful thing ever, um, you know, you try to take a photo and the photo is always deficient. You try to talk about it, and the talk is always deficient because there's something about that being that's real, I suppose. So is the the the view of the real only to do with trauma, or are there excesses beyond that?

Teddy Duncan Jr.

Very perceptive. Like that's I I put it into the the trauma just to kind of uh make it something that, you know, maybe like easier to like formulate and things like that, but it's absolutely not just uh the traumatic, right? It is, we live it would, you know, what I mentioned in the beginning of uh of the interview is like a uh the symbolic universe. And the real is kind of the outside of the symbolic universe that we never have access to, right? The thing that we had access to that we were infants, this kind of feeling of totality of a non-differentiation between me and everything else, that now uh we never have access to, and we because everything is immediated through language. So it's all those things that you mentioned. So it can be terrifying and traumatic, but it can also be like ecstatic, right? Like think about uh, you know, a divine experience or something like that. What do we mean when we say ineffable? Uh, when someone describes a divine experience as ineffable. Well, it's something that uh penetrates into language, kind of uh sticks out within it, right? But we can never properly apply language to it. And that goes for me, for all of our experience, where we're using this. I mean, language is something that's alien to us. Think about something simple like your name. Uh, you know, uh Claudia doesn't really tell us uh who you are. You had to apply this uh alien thing to yourself that never truly captures kind of what you are, right? And same thing anytime that we use language, you're using this thing that pre-exists us to try to understand something uh that's you know uh uh radically personal.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

Yeah, no, that's super profound. I mean, I guess the the the last last thing, otherwise we will speak forever. Um with that moment of awe, right? When I said there that you are just being, isn't there a moment there at which, and maybe this is when a lot of people speak about things like meditation and blah blah blah? Like, isn't there a moment at which you are in the real or part of the real where where language is suspended, where you just are. Does that is is then are you accessing? Or for you it is always mediated through language, and the only reason I feel awe is because I've got some preconceived idea of what awe should be or what nature should make me feel.

Teddy Duncan Jr.

I think I I would say I don't think you have like immediate uh access to the real, but I think there can be a rupture within language. The the way uh again to the appeal to Gizak, the way he describes it as there's a kind of uh there's the field of language, uh, so like a fence or something like that, and then there's a hole within it, right? So the reason why you even can recognize that as the real is because of that hole. That's not really access to the thing, that's just a hole within what can where language can be applied, right? Uh and of course those experiences of ah, or even like think of if you wanted to bring this back to animals, think about trying to understand like the uniqueness of an animal. You could never so we were talking about earlier in like the traumatic way of like slaughter, but even trying like your pet or an animal that you really love, really trying to understand the alterity, the radical otherness of that animal is something that language can never apply to. Yeah. Uh and like your feelings towards it. That is, in a sense, the real kind of breaking through uh into things or trying, creating a hole within your language, right?

Zoological Lacan And Contact

Claudia Hirtenfelder

I mean, I guess this is what we're often resisting, not even just with with animals, but with humans, we're often resisting essentialism, right? Because we're almost recognizing the deficiency of language, right? Like we try to put these labels in categorizations because that's what we do as humans. We find patterns and we put a label, but those labels are always inherently deficient. What does it mean to be a woman? What does it mean to be, you know, um American? What does it mean to be X? What is it? Those labels are always, like you say, inherently uh, and with animals, of course, in animal studies, we often uh, you know, we'll say, well, how much can biology really capture who that individual is? How much can species really capture who X is? So I hear you. Um, all right, this has been a really fantastic conversation, Teddy. Thank you so much for joining me on the show. Uh, before you leave, uh, if folks want to get in touch with you, how can they do so? And what are you currently working on?

Teddy Duncan Jr.

Uh so uh for contact, uh, it would be my email. Can we put it in maybe in like a captain of the case? Okay, cool. And then uh what I'm working on right now, uh I'm working on, I have a contract uh with Rootledge right now for my next book, which is gonna be called Zoological Lacan, uh, which is why I'm I'm spending a lot more time here talking about the cycloanalytic parts than the kind of Marxian part, because that's kind of what I'm embedded in right now. And this is gonna be the first book uh about trying to bring together Lacanian psychoanalysis and understanding of animals, not in terms of meat or anything like that, but their actual subjectivity. So trying to understand uh the interiority of animals using Lacanian psychoanalysis. So it has some continuity to what I was doing before, but is also in some ways kind of a break from thinking about meat and things like that. Because when you're talking about meat, you're mostly talking about humans' perception of meat and things like that.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

Yeah, yeah. No, I mean I did a history of cows and I had to make a point of saying I'm not doing a history of meat, I'm doing a history of cows because it's a it's a common slip, right? To to focus on the commodity instead of the animal to hire the commodity. Um Teddy, thank you so much. Best of luck. The book sounds really interesting. Um and yeah, best of luck with the writing, congrats on the congrats on the um the engagement. You said you're engaged, congrats on the engagement, congrats on the uh contract with Ruffledge, and uh yeah, it's been great having you on the show.

Teddy Duncan Jr.

Thank you so much, Mario.

Claudia Hirtenfelder

Thank you, Teddy, for being a wonderful guest. Thank you to Jeremy John for the logo and Gordon Clark for the bed music. This episode was produced, hosted, and edited by myself. This is The Animal Turn with me, Claudia Hoppenfelder.

Siobhan O'Sullivan

For more great IRL podcasts, visit irall pod dot com. That's I R O A R P O D.com.

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Claudia Hirtenfelder

Host
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Teddy Duncan Jr.

Guest

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